Daria Seitz

On 21 January 2026, Daria Seitz successfully defended her dissertation entitled ‘Modelling effects of agricultural management on organic carbon stocks in German soils’ at the Technical University of Braunschweig. The doctoral thesis was written as part of the EJP Soil Project (CarboSeq) and supervised by Prof. Axel Don and Dr. René Dechow.

The sequestration and storage of additional carbon in soils could be a promising approach in the fight against climate change. In her dissertation, Daria Seitz investigated the influence of agricultural management on the carbon balance and carbon stocks of agricultural soils, and whether and to what extent agricultural measures can realistically contribute to carbon sequestration, thereby mitigating climate change.

Based on data from the first German Agricultural Soil Inventory, she conducted a total of four studies on the following four agricultural measures: intercropping, straw removal, biochar application and land use changes between cropland and grassland. She modelled on a Germany-wide scale in various scenarios how the expansion of intercropping, straw removal and biochar application would affect soil carbon stocks and what effect this would have on emissions from agriculture. To simulate soil carbon effects of land use changes between arable land and grassland, she tested various versions of the RothC soil carbon model, which led to the development of a new model version (RothC-LUC). This model modification includes a land use-specific stabilisation mechanism under grassland, which has improved the modelled carbon dynamics following land use changes.

In her doctoral thesis, she showed that the realistic achievable build-up of soil carbon through optimisation of agricultural management is often not sufficient to stop existing losses of soil carbon. Only a massive expansion of biochar application could compensate for average carbon losses in croplands and offset at least a small portion of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions on a national scale.

In her doctoral thesis, Daria Seitz has significantly advanced the process models used in national greenhouse gas reporting (LULUCF sector) and made an important contribution to estimating the impact of various agricultural measures on soil carbon stocks on a national scale. These results have already attracted considerable attention.